Measurement Error in the Consumer Price Index: Where Do We Stand?
综述了消费者价格指数（CPI）测量误差的证据，估计CPI每年高估生活成本变化约0.6个百分点，并识别了此前未被讨论的加权偏差，对政策制定者和统计机构有参考价值。
We survey the evidence bearing on measurement error in the CPI and provide our best estimate of the magnitude of CPI bias. We also identify a weighting bias in the CPI that has not been previously discussed in the literature. In total, we estimate that the CPI overstates the change in the cost of living by about 0.6 percentage point per year, with a confidence interval that ranges from 0.1 to 1.2 percentage points. Roughly half of this bias is accounted for by the CPI's inability to fully capture the welfare improvement from quality change and the introduction of new items. Our bias estimate is smaller than that found in several earlier studies, in part because the BLS has recently made a variety of improvements to its procedures; our study highlights several potential areas for further improvement.